


Nights Like This

by missingelderly



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Mild Angst, Smoking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-19
Updated: 2015-06-19
Packaged: 2018-04-05 03:22:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 906
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4163823
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/missingelderly/pseuds/missingelderly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everyone worries about the future. Even Clarke Griffin.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nights Like This

**Author's Note:**

> Based off true events. Pretty heavily, actually. Started off as a stream of conscious piece, but I polished it up a little so it'd be easier to read.
> 
> clarphy brotp 4 lyfe \m/
> 
> Dedicated to Abby, who can relate.

Clarke is a bit of a night owl. She stays up until there is either nothing left to do but sleep or exhaustion takes her by force. She knows when all of her friends fall asleep because of this: at some point the texts stop, a phone call ends with a yawn, sleepy goodbyes are exchanged on the threshold of her apartment. Clarke always finds an excuse to stay up for just a few more minutes, and that handful of seconds somehow always ends up with her blinking blearily at the sunrise, confused because wasn’t it just midnight a little while ago?

She’s been doing too much thinking and not enough art lately. Thinking about her dad (deceased, the gilded image she had always held of him starting to crack), about her mom’s threats to cut her off if she doesn’t get a job (a “real job”, as opposed to a fake one apparently), about the gallery that’s interested in her work (sometimes she felt like she didn’t possess the vocabulary to talk to well-established artists). She feels as if she’s standing on a great precipice and that soon she will leap, or be pushed, or otherwise stumble into the maw of all-encompassing unknown.

Her phone beeps. It’s Murphy. _I’m outside_.

She buzzes him in. He does this a lot. Always unannounced.

They sit on the balcony like they do every time. He always comes over on clear nights, Clarke suspects, for this reason. He perches on top of her table and she leans her elbows against the railing. They pass a cigarette back and forth. Normally she smokes Pall Mall, but she will concede to his Lucky Strikes tonight.

She stares out at the skyline. The sun has long since set, but the horizon is still illuminated by the combined glow of streetlights and headlights and lights lights lights. She takes a drag from the cigarette and sighs out the smoke. Clarke smokes because it’s something to do. Murphy smokes because he’s genuinely addicted to nicotine.

“I have no idea what the hell I’m doing.”

He peers at her and lights up another cigarette. “Welcome to the club.”

She looks over at him. They’re both broke, unemployed, have seen death too many times in their short lives. Dropouts. Fuckups. Artists. His eyes look strained and watery. He’s hungover.

“I feel like I’m about to decide the course of the rest of my life,” she says. “Like every decision I make right now will affect me ten years down the road, and if I screw up now I’m screwed for life.”

He does a one shoulder shrug, as if her fear is completely rational. “What do you want?”

She flicks the ashes over the edge. “I can’t have what I want.”

“Regardless.”

“In a perfect world, I’d never have to get a real job. I would just make art all day and sell it and live off of that. I would meet other artists. I would travel. Visit museums. I’ve always wanted to go to Greece,” she adds shyly.

“Then what’s stopping you?”

“Everything. The real world, you know? Society. My mom. My past. I don’t want to go back to college. I don’t want to do anything anymore.” 

She doesn’t mean that last part, but she says it anyway. Maybe it’s partially true. She didn’t want to do what was expected of her. The world was so vast and wide that it scared her to death. She was terrified enough when she was first shoved out the gates of her old suburban neighborhood, out the doors of the house she grew up in, and into a new city with a roulette of roommates, some better than others, but who all faded into the same blur anyway. Now she’s back in the city she told herself she would never return to, living in a place she loved but couldn’t afford. She was afraid of bumping into her mom every time she went out. She was afraid that she had spent so long making art by herself that what she was producing wasn’t good enough. Her style felt boring, old. She experimented and loved the results when she finished, but hated them the next day. 

She thinks all this while Murphy stares at her pensively. “We can get you to Greece,” he says.

Clarke shakes her head. “I hope so.”

“We will. I’m not one for blind optimism on the other stuff, but you’ve got a good head on your shoulders, Griffin. You’ll get there.” He takes a long drag of his cigarette. “And if you want my unsolicited, inexperienced advice, I think you should get into the gallery scene. Everything will snowball from there.”

“What about school?”

He curls his lip. “Fuck school. You dropped out for a reason.”

Debilitating anxiety and a nasty perfectionist complex. Valid reasons in her book.

She rubs her eyes. Maybe it was later than she thought. “What about you? What do you want?”

“Hm.” He ponders for a long moment. “A drink.” He pitches the spent cigarette over the edge of the balcony and into the street below, the glowing red ember arching into darkness.

Clarke smiles. “Will I ever get a straight answer out of you?”

Murphy stands to leave. “Probably not.” He smiles back.

\---

The next day, Clarke wakes up at noon and doodles a cluster of violets on a scrap of paper. For once, it is enough. 


End file.
